What can I do with this hastily made choral recording

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:02 pm

OK, the story here is I was singing at a choral concert which someone else was due to record. Due to a misunderstanding this did not happen and I discovered this about ten minutes before the performance was due to start. All I could find in my car was a single housing fixed XY pair (AT825), a minidisc walkman and one minidisc, not even a mic stand. So, usinga shoe lace I tied the microphone to a pew closest to the aisle guessing at a reasonable distance and set the thing to record. Due to the length of the concert I had to use LP2 mode as I only had the one disc.

Listening to the recording on headphones (Senhesier HD50s) it doesn't sound as bad as I had feared and it even seems OK in the car, but on speakers it seems both thin (lacking bass) and confused at the same time.

Any ideas what I can do to it? I am not expecting to be able to make it sound like a pro job, of course, but anything that helps would be good.

I have tried boosting the low frequencies but I wonder if I am trying to boost frequencies that have been discarded by the LP2 ATRAC coding?

Watching a spectrum it also seems that just about any instrument playing causes a peak at around 300hz so I wonder if there is a resonance in the church at that frequency. Cutting it slightly seems to help a little, though cutting it more than a little makes a definite hole.

Finally I had the chance to do it again I think I would have the mic position nearer the performers to get a bit more direct sound and less reverb. Do you agree?

Anyway samples are available here in MP3:

Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3

or FLAC:

Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:40 pm

I heard nothing but a snow storm on those MP3s. Just noise.

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 12:47 am

yup, I couldn't get any of my software to read it either.

Media player indicated 179 kilobits per second? That's an oddball figure.

An oddball figure
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:38 am

Sorry about the strange MP3s - I think what happenned was the MP3 coder treated a 32 bit float wave file as if it were 16 bit integer. I have re-encoded them, uploaded and tested them and it should be OK now. If they still seem like white noise it may help to clear the web browser's cache as it is probably giving you the old file from your hard disk rather than downloading afresh from the internet.

BTW, a little more background. The work is the Verdi Requiem, sample 1 is the very start and chosen because that is about as quiet as it gets, sample 2 is later in the first movement and chosen because it has a sequence of various solo singers and sample 3 is the beginning of the Dies Irae chosen because it is loud and busy.

The performers are a c. 80 piece choir and a 50 piece orchestra.

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:59 pm

Unfortunatly there appears to be too much microphone noise either from people or your gain is rediculously high too.....hence the hiss.....it sounds like it could be a great recording but Iwould do it again under more controlled circumstances

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 2:03 pm

Pretty good for throwing up a handheld. I would say it's a bit too much upper mid range......

But I'm listening at work on built-in iMac speakers.........

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